Ann: Substantial Increase to Makuutu REE Resource to over 500Mt, page-77

Substantial increase to Makuutu resource to over 500 million tonnes

Mineral Resource Estimate increased to 532 million tonnes at 640 ppm TREO, maintaining a cut-off grade of 200 parts per million (ppm) Total Rare Earth Oxide minus CeO2 (TREO-CeO2)

All is indicated and inferred, nothing is measured/proved.

640 ppm = 0.064% TREO. We still need to see, how they can get the value-carrying contents commercially viable and environmentally benign out of the ground. That is the crux.

If you excavate and move this regolith/saprolite/clay for heap-leaching, like you would do with low content gold resources, in this case 100% of the cost would apply to the 0.064% of value-carrying contents.

Visualise this: A truckload of 40 t of regolith/saprolite/clay contains 26 kgs of rare earths. If the cost of excavation and trucking to the heap should be US$10/t regolith/saprolite/clay, that cost is US$15/kg of rare earth content. To add insult to injury, that is before processing and separation cost.

Rare earths are not valued like gold at US$60,000/kg, in case of the composition of Ionic Rare Earth’s Makutuu we see it rather at ~US$40/kg, cleared for recovery losses.

In fact, even after the breath-taking rise of rare earth prices, for Makuutu and also for other rare earth deposits, rare earth prices are still too low.